State-mandated renewable portfolio standards affect substantial portions of the total U.S. electricity supply. Renewable portfolio standards are environmentally motivated policies, yet they have the potential to greatly impact economy. There is not an agreement in the literature on the impact of renewable portfolio standards policies on regional economies, especially on job creation. By integrating various methodologies including econometrics, geographic information system, and input–output analysis into a unique system dynamics model, this paper estimates the economic and environmental impacts of various renewable portfolio standards scenarios in the state of New Mexico, located in Southwestern U.S. The state is endowed with traditional fossil fuel resources and substantial renewable energy potential. In this work we estimated and compared the economic and environmental tradeoffs at the county level under three renewable portfolio standards: New Mexico’s original standard of 20% renewables, the recently adopted 100% renewables standard, and a reduced renewable standard of 10%. The final one would be a return to a more traditional generation profile. We found that while the 20% standard has the highest market-based economic impact on the state as a whole, it is not significantly different from other scenarios. However, when environmental impacts are included, the 100% standard yields the highest value. In addition, while the state level economic impacts across the three scenarios are not significantly different, the county-level impacts are substantial. This is especially important for a state like New Mexico, which has a high reliance on energy for economic development. A higher renewable portfolio standard appears to be an economic tool to stimulate targeted areas’ economic growth. These results have policy implications.

Anthropogenic activities are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, causing extreme events like soil erosion, droughts, floods, forest fires and tornadoes. Fossil fuel consumption produces CO2, and trapping heat is the major reason for a rapid increase in global temperature, and electricity generation is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel consumption, CO2 emissions and their adverse impact have become the focus of efforts to mitigate climate change vulnerability. This study explores empirical determinants of vulnerability to climate change such as ecosystem, food, health and infrastructure. The sustainable use of energy is necessary for development, and a source of response to climate change. The present study focuses on renewable energy consumption to determine climate vulnerability in G7 countries between 1995 and 2019. The panel ARDL approach showed that the renewable to non-renewable energy mix showed a quadratic effect on vulnerability, whereby a minimum threshold of renewable energy is required to witness a reduction in food, health and infrastructure vulnerability. Other results indicate that trade openness and development expenditures reduce health vulnerability. Development expenditures also decrease ecosystem vulnerability, while trade openness increases it. However, both of these variables increase infrastructure vulnerability. Avoiding severe food and water crises requires investment to tackle climate change, conserve energy and water resources, reform global trade and food markets, and adapting and adopting climate-resilient responses to change.

BackgroundAs per the United Nations Women data, the maternal mortality rate in war-affected countries is critical and more than 800 million people live in war-affected countries (ICRC). External and internal conflicts such as foreign pressure, war and cross-border, civil disorder, terrorism, and civil war, are characteristics of Middle Eastern and African countries. Therefore considering the rapid increment of political risks and internal and external conflicts in Africa and the Middle East during the last decade, and considering warfare as a key contributor to maternal mortality; This paper seeks to evaluate the factors that have caused significant rates of maternal mortality in Middle Eastern and African countries by emphasizing the contributions of a number of political risk aspects as Civil Disorder Index, Terrorism Index, Civil War Index, Foreign Pressures Index, Cross-Border Conflict Index, War Index along with other socio-economic factors.MethodData were collected from forty-six countries during 2011–2016 to explore the regional contributions of political risk aspects to the maternal mortality rate through spatial approaches.ResultsIt was found that GDP per capita, energy intensity, and urbanization strongly impacted maternal mortality. Also, it was observed that natural resource rents and economic growth significantly influenced the reduction of mortality by expanding healthcare services. The urban expansion was found to have elevated maternal mortality. A majority of external and internal conflicts reduced the orientation of production toward healthcare services and thus raised maternal mortality. On the other hand, war and cross-border were found to pose opposite impacts.ConclusionThe findings revealed that political risks arising from terrorism, foreign pressure, and war in the adjacent countries would elevate the rate of mortality in the original country. This implies the spillover impacts of regional conflicts on maternal mortality elevation at the regional scale.JEL Classification Codes: C23; I10; I18; N37:

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In this research, data from 36 countries from 2013 to 2018 were used to examine the factors influencing CO2 emissions in Islamic countries, focusing on the impact of Islamic financial growth. The spatial econometric technique estimation findings indicate that there is no geographical association between CO2 emissions in the analyzed countries. The test findings establish the existence of the Kuznets hypothesis for the environment. Additionally, trade openness and increased energy usage have resulted in an increase in CO2 emissions. The impacts of traditional financial development factors, such as financial market and financial institution variables, were examined in this research. The findings indicate that the two variables have no direct and substantial influence on CO2 emissions and that their significant effect on CO2 emissions appears only when their nonlinear and spillover effects on energy consumption and economic growth are included. Additionally, the growth of financial institutions is inversely proportional to the intensity of carbon emissions. The results indicate that while the development of financial markets and institutions results in a significant increase in CO2 emissions, the negative coefficient of the interaction between financial development and energy consumption indicates that financial development ensures energy efficiency, which reduces the intensity of carbon emissions. The findings indicate that the expansion and depth of Islamic finance, as measured by total assets, asset quality, earnings, and efficiency of Islamic banks, can result in a nonlinear increase in CO2 emissions with a U-shaped relationship. The study of spillover effects demonstrates that in addition to their direct and positive effects on CO2 emissions, the increase in Islamic social responsibility and consumer education, and awareness about Islamic banking reduce the enhancing effects of energy consumption on greenhouse gas emissions.

Various studies have been increasingly performed on the reduction of sulfur content of iron ores and concentrates. The presence of sulfur in these materials causes technical problems in steel and alloys and environmental issues in the sintering of iron ore process. The achievement of higher sulfur removal rates has been an important goal since the development of sulfur removal techniques. In this research, an effort is made to separately introduce the various processes, industrial practices, and fundamental research activities to remove sulfur from iron ores, concentrates, or roasted iron ores. In this way, the optimized condition and latest innovations in sulfur removal using flotation are reviewed and the development of leaching and bioleaching techniques for sulfur reduction is introduced; following the development of thermal decomposition, physical separation methods, and magnetic separation technique are discussed. In each section, a brief introduction of fundamentals for the sulfur removal techniques and their potential advantages for sulfur removal are described and challenges for each technique are presented. Finally, the techniques are compared from technical, economic and environmental viewpoints, and future trends in desulfurization of iron ores are presented.

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Electricity generation in the United States is rapidly moving towards integrating more renewables into the system due to several factors, including cost competitiveness, consumer preferences, and state and federal policies, such as production and income tax incentives, renewable portfolio standards (RPSs), and state level subsidies for solar energy. While these policies have been researched comprehensively, in this paper we investigate consumer preference and willingness to pay toward renewable energy. Consumer preferences may impact the type of renewable energy utilized, as well as state-determined RPS requirements. We implement a choice experiment survey to gain understanding of consumer preferences and their preference heterogeneity. We conduct the survey in New Mexico, a state with RPS and great potential for renewables, particularly in solar where it ranks third in the U.S. for that potential. Focusing on the consumers of the state's major utility, our choice experiment considers an increase in renewable energy and preference for different types of solar energy (rooftop solar and solar farm). We control for location heterogeneity (i.e., rural vs. urban), as well as exposure to solar installations. Utilizing multinomial logit and random parameter logit our results suggest respondents support an increased RPS solar requirement and they have a positive marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for rooftop solar and smart meter installation. These values are impacted by several factors, including location and exposure to solar. We also observe a distance decay effect on respondents' MWTP for different solar plans. For regulators considering additional RPS levels, or utilities considering solar installations, the results provide improved information on consumer preferences, heterogeneity of response, and MWTP for solar energy.